


You're My Best Friend (ooooo)

by CloudySkyes



Series: The First Day of the Rest of Their Lives (in a way) [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: After the apocolypse that wasn't, Angst, Existentialism, M/M, a thought experiment about what maybe happened to them, enjoy the boys being cranky and spooped!, there's...there's a lot of staring into various beverages now that I think about it, this is my first good omens fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 11:35:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17848694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudySkyes/pseuds/CloudySkyes
Summary: Aziraphale didn't know what to expect from contacting the higher-ups after the apocalypse that wasn't, this...wasn't it.And Crowley is lost too, don't look at him.--A fic exploring what happens after the end. Or the almost-end rather.





	1. Chapter 1

A watchful, tense silence.

Waiting was not Aziraphale’s strongest skill. Sure, he had divine patience supposedly, but a certain predilection to fidget when nervous and the regrettable tendency towards frustration had rubbed off on him with enough years on earth. Though whether humanity as a whole or a certain enemy element were to blame was up for debate.

So he waited, impatiently.

Finally, a voice. Aziraphale released a breath he had been holding without relief for the past 5 minutes, not that he really needed to breathe of course, as it said,

“Yes, who is this?”

It was quarterly check-in time and Aziraphale had been dreading the call all morning. This routine didn’t usually provoke such anxiety, but this was his first report since the...not apocalypse. Nothing for weeks, in fact, this would be his first communication since that go- da- _awful_ day. Crowley had been similarly ignored, and he was vaguely aware his counterpart would also be checking in with his own superiors some time that same day.

 

“We’ll see if I can’t  prevail upon the mercy of Hell,” he had said at dinner the previous night. Aziraphale had perked at that,

“Oh, yes?”

Crowley gazed into the depths of his glass of red wine and replied with a murky expression on his face.

“Just a little joke.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale had replied.

 

Reeling in his straying focus, Aziraphale stood straighter in the candlelit circle of divine presence and cleared his throat.

“Ah, yes. Just me you see, quarterly check in and all that, right on time. Ha ha.”

A pause.

“Who?”, came the voice, tired and tried.

“Oh hah, my mistake, silly me. It’s Aziraphale.”

A longer, more pregnant pause.

Your typical pregnant pause is an analogy for an uneventful 9-month pregnancy, resulting in the birth a perfectly average baby. Their mother, with the willful ignorance of those who refuse to understand their lives have been perhaps easier than some others’, will soon after inform friends ‘How easy it is Helen love, really not so bad as they tell you’. On this scale, the pause on the Heavenly representative’s end was expecting octuplets and heavily aggrieved.

Finally a voice spoke again. Except, not the same voice, not by a long shot. This voice sent shivers down his spine, the harmonies seemingly designed to speak to his angelic brain, and what it was telling it was _KNEEL._ The voice of God. Metatron

“We Know No Angel Named Aziraphale.”

Each syllable, each vowel and consonant dropped into place like a gravestone with his name on it. As the words were spoken, he knew they were true; they altered the shape of reality with their conviction. He felt energy drain from his body, like his cells were screaming. Or more accurately like cells he only occasionally remembered to have were being drug kicking and wailing into the physical world.

His vision faded and his knees sagged, and the last thing we saw was the divine light inside the circle fading until it disappeared.

 _Bugger_ , he thought, and then didn’t anymore.

 

\--

 

Crowley blessed as he sped to Aziraphale’s bookshop.

No one in Hell had answered, which in of itself wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, being ignored by Hell was not really a concern of his. But he’d been feeling...weird all morning, like he was exhausted, like everything was suddenly effort.

He’d smelled something awful in his flat that morning and had opened the fridge to find the contents had spoiled. He’d stared at them for a good 10 minutes, not exactly sure when his concentration had lapsed so much as to forget to mentally keep the food fresh.

Then was a headache. He’s used to the painful sensation, but it had almost always been associated with grim and fell forces, or occasionally heavenly ones when Aziraphale really got the bit between his teeth in a heated and tipsy debate. This was different, unprompted and almost mundane. He thought vaugely as he drove if there was any use in taking an aspirin tablet.

He was headed to Aziraphale’s for an after-report drink, and to see if the angel had any insights into the oddness following Crowley around.

He adjusted his sunglasses as suddenly his eyes had trouble focusing.

\--

Crowley pushed open the bookshop door and the bell jangled gloomily, just as Aziraphale liked it. Nothing like a somber bell to make potential customers vaguely uncomfortable and suddenly existential.

Crowley scanned the shop and his eyes widened behind his glasses.

Books were strewn haphazardly, a heavenly communications circle not fully erased was smudged across the floor. The carefully crafted artificial unpleasant musty smell Aziraphale maintained was gone, now it just smelled of dust and… alcohol?

The shop was dark, darker than usual it seemed to Crowley, having difficulty focusing.

“‘Ziraphale?”, he called out into the space.

He looked to the back room door, waiting for the angel to appear.

Something rustled in his periphery and he spun around. In a dark corner, surrounded by a pile of books was a hunched shape. He was having a hard time seeing much of anything more, so he took his sunglasses off and looked again.

“Aziraphale? What-”, he cut himself off as he took in more details of the scene. Two, no, three bottles, mostly empty, lay strewn around; one, having fallen on its side, had spilled its dregs and was sitting in a dark stain, the dark red touching the edges of some of the strewn books, a sacrilege going currently unheeded by the angel.

Aziraphale moved for the first time, but rather than answering Crowley he took a swig from the bottle gripped in his right hand. 

He hadn’t even miracled it into anything expensive.

Crowley had seen Aziraphale drunk innumerable times, but he’d never seen him this deplorably smashed.

Aziraphale looked up, hooded eyes and blotchy red cheeks staring at him accusatorially, Crowley was shocked to see dried tear tracks. Aziraphale seemed to contemplate something, then opened his mouth to slur,

“S’all yer fault you know.”

Crowley was still frozen in shock.

“Whole- whole bloody things-s because of you.”

Crowley gathered his scattered wits enough to reply,

“Aziraphale, what the bloody- what happened? Did heaven-?”,

Aziraphale barked out a sharp, cynical laugh. It sounded wrong coming from him.

“Oh don’t haf to worry ‘bout them anymore, not anymore. No mmmeddling management for me, I’m a free ag- *hic* agent now.”

Crowley stared.

“Heaven fired you? Or what are you saying- are you saying you _fell_?! Bless it angel-”

Interrupting again, Aziraphale leaned forward to hiss,

“No but you wish I had! That’s what you’ve been after this whole time you, you, you _Serpent_!”

Crowley felt like he had got hit in the chest by not one, but two bowling balls. One smashed through his ribcage and left his heart hammering and his lungs struggling to draw breath in the face of Aziraphale’s accusations. The other felt like it hit him, then stayed in his gut with a terrible heaviness as he realized the angel was crying.

Seconds ticked by, then minutes, silently locked in a stasis of pain and anger, neither moved an inch.

Then Aziraphale sniffed and took another drag of wine that emptied the bottle. He looked at it and sniffed again, forlorn.

“C’n get actually proper drunk now. Wanted to see’f I could get alcohol poisoning.”

Slow, creeping, horrifying realization started at Crowley’s toes and worked its way up his body, leaving a rictus of fear in its wake.

Aziraphale continued, still staring into his bottle,

“Always thought you’d get me one day. Or I’d rede-re- save you. But really, which is the more likely? No I-I always thought I’d fall. Not this.”

Then his eyes bore into Crowley’s,

“Looks like they got you too huh? We’re ac-accompliceses.”

Crowley took an involuntary step back and the barely concealed madness in the angel’s eyes, dread making his feet feel leaden. Then he croaked,

“What do you mean?”

Aziraphale continued to stare at him, straight into his eyes. He seemed to consider something.

“I liked ‘em better yellow.”

Crowley’s head throbbed, his stomach churned, and he couldn’t stop any of it.

He watched as Aziraphale turned green and stumbled to his feet, only to rush to the loo.

Through the ringing in his ears Crowley heard him retching, and his brain thought in a detached way, ‘Angels don’t get sick’.

Then, like a spell had been broken, Crowley spun to locate a reflective surface, and marched to a faded baroque mirror on the wall and stared himself in the eyes. His two, golden brown, slitless eyes, and when he forgot to breathe he actually had to start up again or he felt like he might faint.

The hammer had come down all right, the powers above and below had decided what their punishment must be.   
Aziraphale retched in the bathroom and Crowley stared and stared and stared into the eyes of a stranger. Into the eyes of a human.

  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 1

Crowley sat down. There was a lumpy armchair in the front of the store that usually was covered in books to discourage the potential comfort of any visitors. Crowley gently perched atop the pile, the hard lines and sharp corners dug into his legs and grounded him slightly.

Aziraphale could be heard breathing heavily in the bathroom, but by the sound of things the sickness had passed for the meanwhile.

Crowley sat staring at the sunglasses in his hand, realizing how unnecessary they were now.

He heard Aziraphale struggle to standing, turn the tap on and off, and stumble back into the shop.

Crowley turned around and met his eyes. He saw anger there, but he also saw intense regret and sadness.

Aziraphale stood swaying, mouth gaping like a fish.

Crowley’s emotions boiled, frustration and helplessness scalding him and leaving him hurting and hopeless.

Aziraphale’s brow knitted so intensely as to make serious progress on a sweater, and he managed to eek out,

“My, my dear boy…”

Crowley stood up abruptly and strode angrily to the door. He paused as he heard the angel snivel behind him, then slammed the door open and let it jolt close behind with a mournful clang of shop bells.

Crowley stopped and shivered as his eyes closed. Funereal.

He looked to the glasses in his hand and, in a fit of anger and hurt, threw them to the ground. For extra measure he stomped them into shards under his heel.

He stormed to the Bentley, then thought hard for a moment before carefully opening the door and sitting down gingerly. He would have to keep it intact by mundane, mortal care now.

He sat there for hours.

Night fell.

The shop lights came on.

It felt like he was keeping vigil. He wasn’t sure what for.

He thought, and thought until his mind became torpid and his thoughts sluggish.

And then he slept.

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day 2

Aziraphale woke with a start, and was immediately disoriented. He...had slept so rarely it felt alien to wake up and feel-

Oh _Damn._

He bent forward, clutched his head and endeavored not to lose the contents of his stomach again. He barely registered that he was sprawled on the couch in the back room. His head pounded like- like- like a bloody bad hangover, that’s what.

His brain groped for details of the past 24 hours, and he instinctively reached inside to miracle the hangover away and felt as though he ran into a brick wall. Or more accurately a huge, empty, achingly empty, space.

Right.

Right.

Oh....Oh no it was coming back to him now.

He clutched his head tighter.  
What had happened.  
What had he done.

He started to get up, then groaned and slumped down.

Several minutes passed before he tried again, much more gingerly this time. Carefully he put both feet on the ground, one at a time, and gently levered himself to standing.

Shuffling his way to the front of the shop, he observed with a heavy heart the destruction he had wrought the previous night. Books of divine scholarship lay scattered in a semicircle where he had crashed with most of his wine cupboard. He had wanted to know if anything like his situation, and he supposed Crowley’s now, had ever occurred before. It hadn’t, at least not that he could tell.

He looked morosely out the window at the gray morning, and then looked again, startled by what he saw.

The Bentley?

He watched it with apprehension, sure that he had just managed to catch it pulling in, and that an irate demon was soon to emerge and storm to the door.

After several minutes it became clear that this was not the case at all.

Especially so when a parking official pulled up and got out with a car boot and a ticket book in hand. Aziraphale winced as he watched it happen, feeling curiously helpless.

Everything was different now.

But beyond his sympathy for the situation, Aziraphale remained confused. What was Crowley doing here? Still? Was it possible he hadn't left at all?

Some internal resolve hardened at that. He squared his shoulders, ignored the churning of his stomach as best he could, and headed to the kitchen.

He had some amends to make and a pardon to beg.

\--

 

Crowley woke with a dry mouth and a sour feeling in his throat.

His back and neck felt horrid and compressed, and his arm had gone slightly numb from falling asleep in a cramped position.

As he clawed his way into wakefulness, a decisive clunk echoed through the car.

Crowley’s body jolted and his heart raced. Fight or flight response, huh.

A series of images reached his sleep-addled brain, a parking attendant’s vehicle, a woman walking back to her car and a ticket in his windshield wiper.

His head thumped back onto the seat rest. He waved his hand distractedly to disapparate the wheel clamp and froze as he felt himself draw upon a vast nothing where there ought to have been something, anything.

A crease took up residence between his brows, and he got the uncomfortable feeling that it was there to stay for a while.

As his thoughts spiraled into depression, he was jolted into reality once more by a tap on his driver’s side window. If the day continued on like this he morbidly considered the possibility of a heart attack.

Cautiously he reached out and rolled down the window for a blanched and bundled Aziraphale.

He looked pale and clammy, but his face held determination and a kind of mortified, contrite cheer. It was impressive how many things his expression conveyed at once.

In his hands were two travel mugs of tea, bags still in and the tags sticking out at the sides.

The angel cleared his throat, then after a pause cleared it again.

Finally,

“Walk with me my dear?”

Crowley rolled back the window back up and watched as Aziraphale’s face fell, then watched it rise again in painful hope as he opened the door and got out of the car. Crowley nodded at him, not trusting his voice.

Aziraphale smiled a sickly, nervous rictus of a smile.

“We have a lot to talk about.”

\--

St. James’ park was quiet, the early autumn chill scared off children and their protective mothers and left it populated only with dedicated joggers and bundled and furtive operatives.

Aziraphale and Crowley were quiet for the most part.

Several times Crowley saw in his periphery an attempt from the angel to speak, but something always seemed to stymie the words before they left his throat.

So they walked in silence.

They made their way to a bench and made to sit. Aziraphale waved a hand at a wad of gum absentmindedly and sat down directly on it, not thinking to check to see if his banishment was successful. Crowley watched him realize that he had not, in fact, miracled it away, and an expression of abject horror and revulsion crossed his face.

Crowley couldn’t help it, he snorted into his tea mug at the sight. Aziraphale maintained his look of offense, but Crowley didn’t miss the slight pleased look that crossed the angel’s face at his amusement.

They had fought frequently in the beginning. In the first thousand years, before The Arrangement, they were Not Speaking more frequently than they were Unlikely Comrades. After The Arrangement, things had cooled down considerably, and conflicts that might have been simmering arguments before turned into deep conversations over a bottle (or a dozen) of wine. The issue then became that little personal arguments became apocaly- really serious. The longest fight they had ever had involved a particularly foppish coat worn by a certain angel to a Beethoven concert whereupon he had been hysterically laughed at by a particular demon who refused to apologize for what he argued was a perfectly valid response to the situation. They hadn’t spoken for a year, more because of Crowley’s lack of apology than because of a grudge held on Aziraphale’s part (though he could do that with the best of them, heightened angelic abilities extended to pettiness too). Crowley had made up with Aziraphale by visiting a tailor's shop and approaching him with a coat even more foppish than the first, and several years out of style, just about how Aziraphale liked it. The angel had grinned and had gotten them roaringly drunk and they had decided without ever really discussing it to never bring it up again. Crowley continued to reserve judgement on Aziraphale’s fashion choices however, no matter how outrageous. Deadly sins as a rule oughtn't be applied to angel stock, but pridefulness was an ever so tempting thing to ascribe to this particular angel. Crowley considered it a mark of his excellent influence on Aziraphale.

The fact remained that it had been decades since they’d really truly fought over something, and even then it was a little nothing argument, the sort of squabble that arose over a thousand-year companionship.

This current conflict was new and uncomfortable. The things Aziraphale had said to him felt laden, like they’d been festering for years, decades, maybe even centuries. Crowley contemplated the lid of his mug and resolutely avoided the angels gaze. He wasn’t sure what he’d find there.

Minutes passed.

Aziraphale finished his tea.

Minutes more.

Aziraphale cleared his throat.

Another pause.

“Nippy isn’t it?”, came the deceptively innocent comment.

Crowley knew what this was, what he was being offered, and he wanted none of it. This translated in their personal language to, ‘We don’t have to talk about all that unpleasantness that just passed between us my dear boy, let’s keep calm and carry on as chums and set aside this petty fighting shall we?’. Crowley considered the offer held in that sentence, the idea of repressing and ignoring what had transpired. It depressed him. So he looked straight at the proverbial elephant in the park and took it by its proverbial tusks.

“You know ‘Zira these are middle aged bodies. I’ve been thinking about this.”

The brittle camaraderie cracked.

Aziraphale was silent.

“I dunno what happened yesterday, not really, but to be honest, I mean really honest here, we don’t really _know_ how long we have left. Assuming we can die now. We have no idea really.”

The atmosphere shattered and he felt Aziraphale stiffen beside him.

“I mean it almost doesn’t bear thinking about but we rather have to now, don’t we? Our existentialism means something now doesn’t it? I mean, it actually applies to _us_ now. So...so I’m saying…”,

He paused to consider what he was saying, and instinctively looked to Aziraphale.

He suddenly felt conscious of the altered state of his eyes. Looking at the angel, well, the man now, he felt like he saw more of him than he’d ever seen before. A lightly lined face stared back at him, wind-blown fair curls and reddened cheeks kept him looking cherubic regardless of the loss of his angelic status. But under all that was sadness and fear, and under that was his angel, prideful, caring, pretentious and precious. A bastard truly worth liking.

With this intimacy in his heart and in his eyes, Crowley spoke,

“I’m saying, don’t you think we’d better have it out now? We can’t quite wait a hundred years for the air to clear this time. That’s all I’m saying.”

Crowley averted his intense gaze and looked out at the park and he blinked, his eyes curiously wet. He let himself look at the world, really look at it. He’d walked it since it had first come to be, but he was really part of it now, wasn’t he? He took the tense silence to muse upon his… human-ness. He had put his hand with the mug in it down on the bench between them, and after what might have been ten minutes and might have been an hour- he didn’t really have an accurate internal sense of that anymore- a hand covered his.

He carefully let go of the mug, and let his hand rest on the bench, Aziraphale’s well-manicured hand resting atop his own.

He looked at their hands, not at Aziraphale, as he heard a choked voice emerge. It sounded as unlike Aziraphale as the encounter the previous night had, in a way that left Crowley unbalanced. Someone had run amok in his life and set about changing his constants.

“My-... Crowley. I am so sorry.”

The hand on his gave a squeeze.

Crowley nodded and turned his hand over, returning his gaze to the cloudy sky and the tree-encircled pond. A duck quacked. He let his fingers close around Aziraphale’s and squeeze back. His hand was warm and the skin was so impossibly soft. But his fingertips were slightly callused, perfectly imperfect. It almost made Crowley smile, but not quite.

And so they sat, connected at the hand until the cold budged them from their bench, which was not for quite some time.

And it wasn’t okay, but it just might be eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first GO fic, and it was soooo much fun! Thank you tons to JamiAlexandra7 for beta-ing <3  
> I'm intending on writing further in this story, so expect updates as soon as my university schedule allows. I live for comments, please let me know your thoughts! Even if it's incoherent yelling. Especially if it's incoherent yelling.   
> Much love to you dears,   
> ~Skye


End file.
